Recently google announced that Universal Analytics will end in June of 2023. If you've been holding out on upgrading to Google Analytics 4, the time has almost run out. The new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) interface has been around for some time now, but despite new features being added regularly, many users have not yet had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with it.
In light of privacy concerns relating to Google's Universal Analytics (UA) and with Google setting a date for UA's demise, now is a better time than any to take the leap and start using GA4.
There are many marketers and business owners who are not excited about the switch. This switch will be hard, but this is more beneficial. The most obvious benefit is that it provides significantly more data and can be customized. Thus, you can track what matters to you, not just what Google thinks is important.
What is Google Analytics 4?
GA4 is the next generation of Google Analytics, providing more privacy-focused tracking across websites and apps, relying less on first-party cookies to remain compliant with future privacy regulations.
GA4 has managed to accomplish this by upping its game in machine learning, using modelling to "fill in the gaps" when users refuse to accept cookies, allowing the company to continue providing insights around user engagement while maintaining anonymity. GA4 provides unparalleled insights based on privacy-first tracking, cross-channel data measurement, and AI-powered predictive analytics.The key business benefits of Google Analytics 4
GA4 takes a step in the right direction by offering businesses insights that matter—and can be acted upon today—by utilizing machine learning and AI components.
In GA4, you can describe and collect data in the ways that are most useful for your business. In the future, people will have fewer constraints, and they won't have to be strong-armed into conforming to old events. Gather the data you need and analyse it at the most meaningful level. A notable feature of GA4's free version is the ability to link products for free.
New Features & Capabilities of GA4
As with any big update, there is a lot to learn and you may be wondering how it will affect your job or business. The new data structure and data collection logic in GA4 are vastly different from analytics. In a new system, all interactions are based on users and events, not sessions like in the past. With the focus shifting from sessions to events, marketers can analyze cross-platform data and analyze pathing more quickly.
The event-based model of GA4 makes it more flexible and more capable of predicting user behaviour. A big benefit is the unified user experience across the app and website, but Google has also revamped its custom reporting tool into an "analysis hub" that offers access to custom reports.
New metrics to track
Old user behavioural measurements are on the way out. Metrics including bounce rate and average session duration will no longer be available in GA4, requiring that start using new metrics to understand behaviour. These metrics include engagement rates and engaging sessions, which are more impactful in what they describe than previously available metrics.
Goals Become Conversions
While there is largely a change of name, the taxonomy of previous events has changed slightly as the category/action/label hierarchy has been deprecated. In GA4 every instance of a conversion event will be counted, even if it occurs multiple times during one session. If a user fills out the same form three times in one session, the conversion will count three times. Goals could only be set once per session previously.
Pageviews are out, Views are in
GA4 uses 'Views' over 'pageviews' due to the combined nature of web and app properties; 'Views' includes both screen views and page views. As always, repeated views of the same content are counted.
Session Start has taken over from the session
An entirely new definition has been introduced for what constitutes a session; when the event 'session start' is triggered, which generates a session ID that is appended to each event within a session.
A session ends after 30 minutes. As well as this, sessions no longer restart at midnight or when new campaign parameters are encountered.
Bounce Rate (while still available) is out, Engagement Rate is in
The bounce rate was always determined by whether someone had a 0 session duration. Engagement Rate measures what were really looking for from Bounce Rate: What percentage of people interact with the site?
Average Session Duration has been removed, and Average Engagement Time has been added
Despite the difference in how they're calculated, Average Engagement Time offers insight into what Average Session Duration failed to address: user focus on web or screen pages.
A new way to display data
In Universal Analytics, sessions and pageviews consist of a hit-based data model. Universal Analytics starts collecting data through pageviews, which are considered the key to the ignition. GA4 instead uses events to represent this proverbial key.
Discovering user information with identity spaces
GA4 provides four different identity methods to help create a unified view of cross-device user journeys:
- User – ID
- Google Signals
- Device ID
- Modeling
Data associated with the same user or identity is assigned to the same identity space. Using these identity spaces across all GA4 reporting, brands and advertisers can de-duplicate their user lists, and gain a richer understanding of how they interact with your business.
Multi-purpose audience lists
In Google Analytics 4, you can automatically import audiences and use them as targets in Google Ads on the Google Search Network, Google Display Network, and YouTube. Universal Analytics requires advertisers to recreate Google Ads audiences created by Google Analytics in Google Ads.
How Does GA4 Help With Reporting?
Obtaining useful information from a data collection strategy is only as good as the data collection strategy itself.
How will GA4 help with reporting?Due to the push for user privacy, it is becoming increasingly difficult to track users as they navigate across multiple platforms and use different devices.
The GA4 solution uses enhanced machine-learning techniques to fill in the missing data gaps. Integrating all data associated with the same identity into a single user journey.
Finally, GA4 simplified the reporting interface, making it easier for marketers to spot key trends.
GA4 uses overview reports in summary cards rather than a long list of predefined reports designed to cover all use cases.
Even though learning a new platform and tracking data from your website or app may seem overwhelming, it is clear that this is the future of data tracking. By adopting GA4 sooner rather than later, you'll be better prepared when Google ceases collecting data in Universal Analytics in July 2023.
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